Retro Act

Ten years have passed since the war ended. Due to many treacherous acts and greedy minds, your side - though superior at the start - eventually lost. Now, a few wealthy and extremely vicious individuals are left to control what remains of the world. Even so, the leaders are in constant struggle amongst themselves, each trying to prove his own superiority. One of these individuals is Aamon. He was on the brink of creating a new type of weapon that would revolutionize the current era and propel him past the others. However, his weapon was stolen and he's been trying to recover it for years. It seems he may just have found it again.

You are Cael, one of the last surviving prisoners from the war. After ten years in captivity, your luck seemed to have finally run out as you were scheduled for execution first thing in the morning. Any hope you had left died a long time ago. But that night something strange happened.

The guards were taken out... the cell was unlocked... and you were pulled out of the prison.

As the scenario certainly beats the alternative, you decide to play along... at least for now.

Retro Act is a top-down shooter driven by the story. The player doesn't always get to navigate the craft, depending upon scenario situation. But when you do, your weapon will be versatile, and you will have to pick your fight properly if you want to survive. With numerical keys you change weapons, while with space bar you fire the currently equipped weapon. Each weapon may be for different type of enemies. Plasma cannon can hit only ground and naval targets, lasers can hit aerial units, missiles can hit both ground and air units, while nanobots will fly toward and disintegrate any aerial enemy, if present, even the stealth fighters still in cloak mode. Enemy bullets and projectiles can also be hit in mid air as an alternative to evade enemy fire (though plasma weapon is ineffective and will fly through enemy fire).

The game spans across 11 different levels which vary from caves, valleys and oceans, to underwater, open skies and space. All the while telling the story which will slowly provide you with answers that you seek. The game is loaded with plethora of extras, from story and units details to various artwork and making-of content. It also features fully playable in-game soundtrack.

The game can be finished roughly within 30 minutes and hence does not feature save mode, but you are free to continue repeating any given level as many times as you want. However, dying will cost you penalty which may result in player losing the shields or weapon reloading time being increased, or weapon power being decreased.

Note from developer
This was a hobby project done in GameMaker engine and released in 2010. Each level is tightly tied to its BGM which defines how long the level is (which is about 2-5 min, depending on how long the track is). While character art and their backgrounds are original, all the pixel art was royalty free, and soundtrack was used with permission from their creators. The story and levels were entirely inspired by the soundtrack used in the game. Unlike typical top-down shooters where speed and gazillion of on-screen enemies are a common thing, this is a rather atypical, slow-paced top-down shooter that focuses more on the story. There is no voice-acting, so reading may be distracting, but the game itself is slower even though enemy fire is more deadly. On first level where the player can only fire, timing is essential since AI pilot will always align craft to the closest enemy, so that can be used to indirectly affect the flying pattern. Note that soldiers are as small as a single pixel and their fire cannot harm the player craft. Game only uses keyboard and not a mouse. There is no installation required. Game will originally launch in full screen mode, but its native resolution is 640x480 pixels. You can switch between those two modes by using F4 key (Alt+Enter will not work). This was an older game, so it was only tested to work on Windows XP and Windows 7.